Digital signal processors (DSPs) are commercially available with a host of features including video encoding and decoding capabilities, large buffers/memories, and advanced input/output capabilities including 10/100/1000 Mb/s Ethernet and Universal Serial Bus (USB) control connectivity, among other features.
DSPs are particularly suited to handle video encoding, decoding, transcoding and transrating, and video imaging and video conferencing, among other applications. An advantage of such DSPs is their very high level of integration, leading those skilled in the art to refer to such devices as “system-on-chip” devices. These highly-capable devices are small, fast, and rich in features enabling them to process various types of incoming data to provide a desired specific output. As the demand for video related applications increases, so do the demands on these types of DSPs.